A call to boycott Nvidia games for ATI/AMD owners

[WelshBloke]

Because they don't like it when people won't buy their stuff. If too many people stop buying their stuff, they go out of business.

But the Op doesn't want you to buy games that run better on NV hardware.

That means the only way the boycott will stop is to make everything run faster on AMD hardware, at which point all the NV users will...

You can see why its a retarded argument.

 

[SolMiester]

No. They would be boycotting them because they were designed to run like crap on their hardware. If they stopped doing that, boycott would end, everyone would buy their product, everyone would be happy. Well, everyone except nVidia, the evil b@stards. 😉

Seriously, I'm not saying all, or even most, of the OP's claims are substantiated. Just that your stance that a boycott is dumb because the business effected won't care about people who won't buy their product is illogical. The whole point of a boycott is to get the company's attention by hitting them in their pocketbook by not buying their product(s).

You are saying developers create games to run like crap on AMD hardware? Eh, surely that would only hurt developers revenues.
I can understand NV helping developers to optimise games to run better on their hardware, and frankly see no issue with that, considering AMD have the same opportunity..

I think we need to establish if it optimises to one but not the other, or crippling of one but not the other and IMHO, I cant for one minute believe developers would allow that...
Imagine of AMD suddenly said, yes we will optimise too, then found out NV had malicious code in the game?...Do you really think NV would set themselves up for that?

 

[atxupshot]

I'm running a 5770 and I run bc2 just fine, except for Oasis. (damn that map)

 

[SirPauly]

I think that nVidia and AMD have equal shares in terms of technology overall on the PC platform. nVidia's approach of technology tends to be more closed source and propietary which only benefits nVidia hardware, like PhysX, CUDA etc. While AMD's had helped Microsoft developing standards that helps both vendors, like Tessellation, 3Dc+ known as BC3 and BC6 HDR compressions, Fetch4 known as Gather4, stuff like that.

I do also desire the IHV's to be more pro-active, but not in a way that will cripple the experience like nVidia is doing currently. The thing that AMD apported in games like Dirt 2, some DX11 specs etc works super b on nVidia hardware, but I can't say the same thing with PhysX or image quality stuff like AA. Batman AA anyone? At least the developers made up their mind and released the GOTY edition without the nVidia's MSAA(TM) DRM.

Proprietary that one may license. What's stopping AMD from licensing Cuda? The fear that if they do, Cuda may become the standard? Not what's good for technology or moving things forward but because they're competitors?

Why is there such a stranglehold on the x86 license? Fear if they open it up, they may become irrelevant? Control and anti-competitive?

Why is DirectX only proprietary to Microsoft? Control and anti-competitive?

It's okay for Microsoft to have proprietary for their operating systems and okay for the CPU companies to have proprietary for their CPU's but nVidia can't have proprietary to move things forward, even though one may license their technology.

It would of been much more ideal if the developers adding their own MSAA for their title, originally, but they didn't.

 

[WelshBloke]

Proprietary that one may license. What's stopping AMD from licensing Cuda? The fear that if they do, Cuda may become the standard? Not what's good for technology or moving things forward but because they're competitors?

Why is there such a stranglehold on the x86 license? Fear if they open it up, they may become irrelevant? Control and anti-competitive?

Why is DirectX only proprietary to Microsoft? Control and anti-competitive?

It's okay for Microsoft to have proprietary for their operating systems and okay for the CPU companies to have proprietary for their CPU's but nVidia can't have proprietary to move things forward, even though one may license their technology.

It would of been much more ideal if the developers adding their own MSAA for their title, originally, but they didn't.

The whole PC gaming ecosystem is based (for better or worse) on x86 and (to a slightly lesser extent) DirectX.

Thats just the way it is and everything PC will work with that.

Adding a bunch more propriety stuff in the mix that aren't established standards is just going to cause much grief.

 

[Skurge]

Proprietary that one may license. What's stopping AMD from licensing Cuda? The fear that if they do, Cuda may become the standard? Not what's good for technology or moving things forward but because they're competitors?

Why is there such a stranglehold on the x86 license? Fear if they open it up, they may become irrelevant? Control and anti-competitive?

Why is DirectX only proprietary to Microsoft? Control and anti-competitive?

It's okay for Microsoft to have proprietary for their operating systems and okay for the CPU companies to have proprietary for their CPU's but nVidia can't have proprietary to move things forward, even though one may license their technology.

It would of been much more ideal if the developers adding their own MSAA for their title, originally, but they didn't.

Nah, just think if this. AMD license cuda from nV. nV suddenly release cards that are total crap and AMD have some badass ones. Do you really think nV would code CUDA to run as best as it can on AMD hardware to the point where it makes their cards redundant? That would be suicide and any company that thinks that way wouldnt last very long. You would be naive to think either nV or AMD wouldn't try and keep an leash on how fast the competitors cards are. That would be a reason why AMD won't adopt cuda. another reason is that AMD would have to let nV know everything about their GPUs that is another foolish thing to do. nV would would know how AMD get their memory controller to work at such high speeds for example. Who would do that?

 

[SirPauly]

The whole PC gaming ecosystem is based (for better or worse) on x86 and (to a slightly lesser extent) DirectX.

Thats just the way it is and everything PC will work with that.

Adding a bunch more propriety stuff in the mix that aren't established standards is just going to cause much grief.

Thankfully, there are companies that try to offer more than the establishment and try to be disruptive.

 

[OCGuy]

Something tells me Crysis 2 will do just fine, despite this massive uprising! 😉

 

[SirPauly]

Nah, just think if this. AMD license cuda from nV. nV suddenly release cards that are total crap and AMD have some badass ones. Do you really think nV would code CUDA to run as best as it can on AMD hardware to the point where it makes their cards redundant? That would be suicide and any company that thinks that way wouldnt last very long. You would be naive to think either nV or AMD wouldn't try and keep an leash on how fast the competitors cards are. That would be a reason why AMD won't adopt cuda. another reason is that AMD would have to let nV know everything about their GPUs that is another foolish thing to do. nV would would know how AMD get their memory controller to work at such high speeds for example. Who would do that?

Theory and conjecture hat on:

I think the way AMD could license Cuda is if they had some say in its development, but doubt nVidia would cater. I do believe that AMD likes PhysX but not being tied to Cuda. I also believe that AMD may of asked nVidia for permission to port PhysX to OpenCL - - like AMD ported Havok to OpenCL. Maybe spend their own resources to do it, but nVidia may of said, "no or go whistle!"

 

[WelshBloke]

Thankfully, there are companies that try to offer more than the establishment and try to be disruptive.

😕What?

Seriously, there's plenty of propriety consoles out there that hardware manufacturers have tight control over, I'm not sure turning PC's into another one would be a good idea.

 

[3DVagabond]

But the Op doesn't want you to buy games that run better on NV hardware.

That means the only way the boycott will stop is to make everything run faster on AMD hardware, at which point all the NV users will...

You can see why its a retarded argument.

Yes, I can see the retarded argument.

You are saying developers create games to run like crap on AMD hardware? Eh, surely that would only hurt developers revenues.
I can understand NV helping developers to optimise games to run better on their hardware, and frankly see no issue with that, considering AMD have the same opportunity..

I think we need to establish if it optimises to one but not the other, or crippling of one but not the other and IMHO, I cant for one minute believe developers would allow that...
Imagine of AMD suddenly said, yes we will optimise too, then found out NV had malicious code in the game?...Do you really think NV would set themselves up for that?

You need to read what you quoted from me. I never said that. I was just trying to explain how a boycott works.

 

[WelshBloke]

Yes, I can see the retarded argument

Ok then... :hmm:... Hey wait a minute 😡

 

[digitaldurandal]

Theory and conjecture hat on:

I think the way AMD could license Cuda is if they had some say in its development, but doubt nVidia would cater. I do believe that AMD likes PhysX but not being tied to Cuda. I also believe that AMD may of asked nVidia for permission to port PhysX to OpenCL - - like AMD ported Havok to OpenCL. Maybe spend their own resources to do it, but nVidia may of said, "no or go whistle!"

nVidia's first responsibility is to its stockholders. It is not to you, it is not to open source or some ideal. They are a company and their job is to make profit. Some of their profit is generated by their acquisitions. nVidia paid capital to purchase Physx to gain an edge on AMD.

AMD could easily push their own solution, they have pushed open source. Mostly probably because they have decided the cheapest way to compete is to offer an alternative that is not financed by their company.

If you think either company cares about you beyond your dollar you are sorely mistaken.

Please tell me, if you spend millions on a software license and your main competitor said hey lets make this free for everyone - would you just say sure? If so you would be sued by your own stakeholders as a CEO or fired as an underling.

 

[SolMiester]

Yes, I can see the retarded argument.



You need to read what you quoted from me. I never said that. I was just trying to explain how a boycott works.

Whether or not my quote of yours in context, the OP seem to suggest my post is just so....would you agree with him. The argument he makes is purposeful crippling in the code, I dispute this for obvious reasons!

 

[SirPauly]

😕What?

Seriously, there's plenty of propriety consoles out there that hardware manufacturers have tight control over, I'm not sure turning PC's into another one would be a good idea.

Your fear is a few proprietary features that improve gaming experiences for a particular company translates into control and proprietary for the entire PC ecosystem?

Can I call this extremism? Fear mongering? How about trying to bring value to their customers by working real hard to provide experience differentiation and by doing so may be rewarded with a modest premium or awareness for their name-brand. It's called competition and a free market.

 

[WelshBloke]

Your fear is a few proprietary features that improve gaming experiences for a particular company translates into control and proprietary for the entire PC ecosystem?

Can I call this extremism? Fear mongering? How about trying to bring value to their customers by working real hard to provide experience differentiation and by doing so may be rewarded with a modest premium or awareness for their name-brand. It's called competition and a free market.

Yeah there wouldnt be an 'entire PC ecosystem' then though.

There would be a small fraction that ran nvidia specific stuff, a small fraction that ran AMD specific stuff, a big fraction that were pi**ed off because it had all got too confusing.

Then the consoles would come along and eat all our lunches.😱

Fragmentation is never a good thing, at least not for us, the gamers.

 

[3DVagabond]

Ok then... :hmm:... Hey wait a minute 😡

Sorry, couldn't resist.

You seriously don't understand how/why a boycott works? People don't buy something from a vendor unless they agree to change something. If enough people do it, then the vendor effects changes to regain their business.

If it were organized well, and enough AMD card owners stopped buying particular games because they ran poorly on AMD cards, relative to nVidia cards, the game producers would care. Seems suspicious to me that the vast majority of top titles run comparatively with both brands, but a few titles are outliers. These games are broken in some way. When you see one company's logo, either nVidia or AMD, flashed all over the game and it runs like crap on the other vendor's card, people wonder if it's done purposely. When you have documented examples of it happening in the past, it just adds to the suspicion.

 

[WelshBloke]

Sorry, couldn't resist.

You seriously don't understand how/why a boycott works? People don't buy something from a vendor unless they agree to change something. If enough people do it, then the vendor effects changes to regain their business.

If it were organized well, and enough AMD card owners stopped buying particular games because they ran poorly on AMD cards, relative to nVidia cards, the game producers would care. Seems suspicious to me that the vast majority of top titles run comparatively with both brands, but a few titles are outliers. These games are broken in some way. When you see one company's logo, either nVidia or AMD, flashed all over the game and it runs like crap on the other vendor's card, people wonder if it's done purposely. When you have documented examples of it happening in the past, it just adds to the suspicion.

:awe:

I know how/why a boycott works.

The purpose of this one is what? To force equal performance across vendors?

How the hell is that going to work?

 

[SirPauly]

nVidia's first responsibility is to its stockholders. It is not to you, it is not to open source or some ideal. They are a company and their job is to make profit. Some of their profit is generated by their acquisitions. nVidia paid capital to purchase Physx to gain an edge on AMD.

AMD could easily push their own solution, they have pushed open source. Mostly probably because they have decided the cheapest way to compete is to offer an alternative that is not financed by their company.

If you think either company cares about you beyond your dollar you are sorely mistaken.

Please tell me, if you spend millions on a software license and your main competitor said hey lets make this free for everyone - would you just say sure? If so you would be sued by your own stakeholders as a CEO or fired as an underling.

You break my gaming heart, so cold, you mean, nVidia doesn't care about me? I get it, I'm just a bar code, and it's about company self preservation, revenue, margins and profit.

 

[SirPauly]

You wanna know what's needed is insightful articles on the details of both IHV's developer relations.

 

[mosox]

Nobody claimed that we should buy games that work better on AMD cards, that was a straw man (A straw man argument is an informal fallacy based on misrepresentation of an opponent's position). That would be exactly the same thing anyway.

The one thing claimed is that while those companies have the right to do anything that's in their interest (even by hurting the consumers), we also have the right to boycott them.

And proprietary was never in our interest so defending this is absurd. What do you want for your 3D technology for instance, proprietary software/displays/glasses or open? Microsoft having a monopoly in the OS market is a good thing? I want 10 concurrent good OS to choose from.

As for the benches I call fishy everything that sets (unlike in other games) a medium card from a company way ahead of a top tier card from the competition. There's only so much one can do with optimization, all the rest is sabotage. Sooner or later a whistle-blower will show up and give the details. In the meantime we have the benches, some smell like rotten fish.

As for the developers not willing to lose the customers who have the 'other" hardware they couldn't care less about that. Most of the expenses in producing a game are coding related so if a company like AMD or Nvidia offers to do the heavy lifting for you, you don't care if the other brand users don't buy your game. But those games are used in benches in order to determine us to buy this or that hardware based on skewed results.

That's why I think it's the reviewers' duty to eliminate all the fishy benchmarks that tend to be very different from everything else. If a Renault is faster than a Lamborghini on one track then it's something wrong with the track.

 

[SirPauly]

Yeah there wouldnt be an 'entire PC ecosystem' then though.

There would be a small fraction that ran nvidia specific stuff, a small fraction that ran AMD specific stuff, a big fraction that were pi**ed off because it had all got too confusing.

Then the consoles would come along and eat all our lunches.😱

Fragmentation is never a good thing, at least not for us, the gamers.

We think differently. Personally embrace choice and don't pick and choose what kind of choice is ideal, and the rest causes grief. Anything that improves upon gaming experience potential -- I am all for. Ideally, would like to have mature, open standards but what if there are none? What do you do? Wait? Hold back a company that desires to risk and bring something for their customers? Allow the market place and consumer to decide what is best for their needs. Not the so-called establishment. You have the ultimate say, with your wallet. What more do you need?

 

[erikistired]

The accusations are substantiated by the benchmarks. Ubisoft is the worst offender and claiming that all their shenanigans (I listed a few) over many years have nothing to do with their partnership with Nvidia is naive. I just don't buy that.

I didn't email them, I thought I might get banned for that (I'm not very liked in here). I still want to know the criteria for selecting the games featured in the reviews. Some transparency. I know that Nvidia (maybe AMD too) are pushing for the use of certain benches/games. Having transparent criteria would help the customers a lot.

ever wondered why that is?

the fact is, one sides gets ahead, then the other. they jockey, and we win because we all get more powerful hardware. it's as easy as that.

 

[WelshBloke]

We think differently. Personally embrace choice and don't pick and choose what kind of choice is ideal, and the rest causes grief. Anything that improves upon gaming experience potential -- I am all for. Ideally, would like to have mature, open standards but what if there are none? What do you do? Wait? Hold back a company that desires to risk and bring something for their customers? Allow the market place and consumer to decide what is best for their needs. Not the so-called establishment. You have the ultimate say, with your wallet. What more do you need?

Your kind of choice would involve me having 2 PC's or at least 2 videocards.

Thats not much of a choice.

My choice would be games run ok on both vendors (with a bit of natural variance) and the game designers make them look as good as posible withing the standards everyone is sticking to. That way I have a choice of all the games not just the ones that run with my system.

Also stop talking like Rorschach, its scaring me. 😱

 

[cusideabelincoln]

nVidia's first responsibility is to its stockholders. It is not to you, it is not to open source or some ideal. They are a company and their job is to make profit. Some of their profit is generated by their acquisitions. nVidia paid capital to purchase Physx to gain an edge on AMD.

AMD could easily push their own solution, they have pushed open source. Mostly probably because they have decided the cheapest way to compete is to offer an alternative that is not financed by their company.

If you think either company cares about you beyond your dollar you are sorely mistaken.

Please tell me, if you spend millions on a software license and your main competitor said hey lets make this free for everyone - would you just say sure? If so you would be sued by your own stakeholders as a CEO or fired as an underling.

Expand the view:

A company better damn well care about us, the customers. They are creating products for us to use for our benefit. The company needs us, because we buy the products. They need to keep us satisfied, and to do that they have to care about us and what we want.

I simply don't think their responsibility is solely to consider the shareholders; that just seems pretty narrow-minded. And as a personal opinion, I find that notion sickening and repulsive.

There is a fine line. Wait, there may not even be a line. It's a grey area. Is it their job to make a profit? Is it their job to make as much profit as possible? Just how far can they bleed and push customers to make this profit? How far would a company go? Obviously they can't go too far, because then their products would become unattractive, their overall image would be negatively impacted, and etc. So there must be a threshold for simply "making a profit" and "making a bigger profit" and "turning away customers".

Now the question moves to just where that threshold lies, and hence this is a very complex scenario which, at least in part, involves the current debates manifesting in this thread.

nVidia paid capital to purchase Physx to gain an edge on AMD.

And then they disable PhysX even if their own cards are in the system, capable of pushing PhysX. I find that unacceptable.